“Lies, lies and MORE LIES” – Radio Host, Jeff Rense referring to the media handling of Fukushima

“OBEY” – A popular motto on T-shirts in Japan and elsewhere

I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. I’m going to shout out my window at the jackhammer across the street to drown it out. In Japan where I live you would probably get in trouble for public disturbance but endless construction noise is perfectly acceptable: day, night, weekends, holidays and Christmas.

The other day some of my Japanese university students were shocked when I showed them the classic documentary film which is available on YouTube: “911 Mysteries.” Before viewing the film they told me that politics is “boring” but once they watched it and learned how 911 was a blatant false flag operation, they were energized with curiosity and nearly jumped out of their seats. They mentioned that Japan had used false flag terror in the 1930s in order to invade Manchuria and claim it as its own. These students were making connections, creating mental patterns based on the substantially unbiased evidence I had presented to them — they were learning.

Since many still accept the official story of 911 it is important for us to spread understanding as 911 has hastened the New World Order of domestic and international oppression. It also represents the cognitive dissonance in the public mind which in the same way accepts that nuclear energy is a benefit for mankind.

Because of media blackout and government propaganda, most Japanese are in a state of amnesia regarding the Fukushima nuclear disaster and its radioactive consequences. One older student who was taking my class insisted that it was good to buy radioactive food from Fukushima in order to support the farmers (my idea would be to send them a donation, yes, but don’t give yourself cancer). She also insisted that the nuclear disaster could not have been averted. When I recited ample evidence that it could have been she huffed “I don’t believe it.”

David Lockbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists listed many ways the damaging affects from the tsunami to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant #1 (FNPP#1) accident could have been largely avoided had Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) taken some simple steps (1).

Many people I encounter believe that small amounts of radiation are nothing to worry about. Very small amounts of incidental radiation (not to mention the innumerable other synthetic toxins in our mad made environment) may not be immediately life threatening– but at what point does the bioaccumulation of the ongoing flood of contaminants in our global environment create havoc for the transgenerational health of diverse species including humans?

At least in Taiwan, another nuclear powered country, they are double-checking products from Japan to make sure they pass the radiation test (2).

Japan’s Ambivalence

I won’t address the complex history of Japanese international relations, but we can safely say that Japan is caught between a rock and a hard place, or would that be between the BRIC nations (Brazil; Russia, India and China) and the US/British/Israeli-Zionist nuclear hammer? In my opinion Japan would be better off maintaining good relations with both power blocks. However, Japan with the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party – the CIA’s party of choice) and Prime Minister Shinzo “I love nukes” Abe as obedient puppet to the US-Zio Power Configuration is coerced into continuing to promote nuclear power as a technical and political agenda, even if Japanese citizens are opposed. Abe and the right wing loonies also have a dream of avenging the bitter defeat in WWII.

In the same way that Japan is both imperialist (to Asia) and occupied nation (to US military bases), Okinawa became a Japanese prefecture in 1872 (3) and is today both a US and Japanese colony that suffers under their double hammer of military and political hegemony (4). Okinawa has even been “nuked”– the US lost a hydrogen bomb that slipped off an aircraft carrier that still lies on the bottom of the ocean off Okinawa’s coast (5).

Fukushima: Dispossession Or Denuclearization?

The sad story of the dispossession of the Japanese people from their country by the nuclear industry, coupled with the challenge of denuclearization is spelled out in our excellent new book entitled: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization? (6). I played a role in organizing and contributing to the book, and am proud of the wide range of talented minds that have come together to tackle the issue. *(Proceeds from the book will be donated to the lawyer’s fund to help fight for the rights of Fukushima children who have been displaced by the disaster, tossed aside like disposable human garbage by Tepco and the government.)

Our lead editor Majia Nadesan wrote a synopsis of the anthology book in an article for Veterans Today:

We pose the question starkly: Humanity must choose between denuclearization or dispossession. We document that nuclear power and weapons are connected and their complex fundamentally dispossesses citizens of liberal guarantees, including rights to property, free speech, and the pursuit of happiness. We explore crisis management of the Fukushima disaster to demonstrate dispossession of rights of property, free speech, and the pursuit of happiness, through examples that include lost livelihoods and Fukushima children’s rising rates of thyroid cancer, among other topics….

We disclose strong public support in Japan and elsewhere for decentralized alternative energy production and we describe oligarchic energy industries’ efforts to maintain centralized control when challenged by the decentralizing production tendencies of alternative energy, such as solar…. We are concerned that in the absence of public activism the choices made by governments and industry will prioritize short term profits and vested interests. ‘Dispossession’ is the cumulative effect of these decision criteria in action. Nuclear remains seductive in our Hobbesian world of vying nation-states, despite myriad acknowledged hazards, including aging and decaying infrastructures, recurrent nuclear ‘accidents,’ unceasing contamination, and terrorism. Nuclear seduces even when its effluents threaten the ecosystem and, perhaps, even the human genome (7).

Decommissioning Fukushima In 40 Years?

In the wake of the 3.11 nuclear disaster, Japan immediately shut down all of its approximately 50 reactors out of safety concerns. But today the government is intent on restarting as many as possible to reduce their oil import costs.

The question remains, if you are a chronic alcoholic, how can you regain health by drinking a bottle of vodka for breakfast? I know a Russian man whose father lives in Moscow and is 80 years old, drinks vodka and smokes chronically — yet is doing well living in his run-down hovel. Maybe excessive drinking is the solution.

Presumably, if Japan were safe for nuclear reactors, the initial accident would have been solved and confidence restored, but in fact, the “Fukushima cleanup [is] going painfully slow” (8).

For example, “[r]emoval of melted fuel from Fukushima No. 1 reactor [will be] delayed until 2025” but this number of “2025” is just a ballpark estimate (9). If we compare the situation of Fukushima with Chernobyl, it is obvious that the Fukushima is going to be no picnic.

I have never seen an understandable (or honest) analysis of how Tepco expects to remove the melted fuel from the three destroyed reactors. In 2012, the radiation was 10 sieverts per hour near the reactor buildings and it still is today. If you gauge progress by the half life of cesium 137 you are looking at 90 years before it is decreased to 1.25 sv pr hr– is that low enough for human workers to go in there and play around with?

A simple comparison of Chernobyl shows that the 40 years estimate is pure poppycock. While there are time tables for removing fuel from units 4, 5 and 6; units 1, 2 and 3 (where extensive damage occurred) are in a much worse situation. Assuming Japan can remove the fuel rods from the pools of the three destroyed reactors (1, 2, 3) where there is massive ambient radiation at the buildings, how will they remove the corium that that has melted through the containments? If the Ukrainians can’t remove the corium from its one destroyed reactor, according to what logic will Japan be able to? If the technology exists (it doesn’t), why isn’t it being shared? Is national security more important that international security for all humanity and the planet?

Does Chernobyl’s “safe confinement” of corium actually makes it so?

The sarcophagus [at Chernobyl] locked in 200 tons of radioactive corium, 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium. In 1996 it was deemed impossible to repair the inside of the sarcophagus as radiation levels were estimated to be as high as 10,000 rontgens per hour (normal background radiation in cities is usually around 20-50 microröntgens per hour, and a lethal dose is 500 röntgens over 5 hours). A decision to replace the sarcophagus with the New Safe Confinement was taken, and a project to reconstruct the enclosure is underway (10).

* Chernobyl: one reactor destroyed, corium still hot to handle 28 years later and it the plant is on solid granite foundation;

* Fukushima: three reactors destroyed, corium emitting 10 sieverts per hour near the reactor buildings and the plant is built on soft fill — over a flowing aquifer and near the ocean!

Volcanic Dangers

In addition to ongoing uncertainty and constant leakages of radiation at FNPP#1 (157 billion becquerels per day into the ocean), there is volcanic activity threatening the nationwide reactor restart agenda.

Volcanoes are pesky geological formations that do not follow free market neo-liberal logic, given that the Earth was bestowed to the top 0.01 percent of the world’s people to make money from, this is an inconvenience. Volcanoes may be credited for creating the archipelago of Japan itself, so the Shinto Gods must be thanked of giving us a place to live, even though it is seismically unstable one. While Japanese Prime Malefactor Shinzo “I never met a nuke disaster I didn’t love” Abe is certain nuclear power is completely safe — others differ. The Japan Weather Agency noted that the “[v]olcano near Sendai nuclear plant is shaking and may erupt” (11). Earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes, all safe.

The mayor of the town that is set to restart the reactors claims that his reactors are “100 percent” safe. “ ‘I believe the plant can 100 percent cope with a tsunami and earthquake on the scale that hit Fukushima as well as a possible nuclear accident,’ Iwakiri said…. His assurance that the Sendai plant is absolutely safe is at odds with the NRA’s opinion” (12).

The fact that there was a powerfully destructive volcanic eruption recently at Mount Ontake in Nagano prefecture and that there is a pattern of seismic unrest and volcanic eruptions around the world in recent times, and that many geologists do worry about the mixture of nuclear power plants, volcanoes and earthquakes is cause for concern (13; 14). But like a crazy driver barreling around a 45 degree turn at full speed with his eyes shut, our leaders seem hell-bent on having another accident.

The Tohoku Non-Reconstruction Destruction Industry

The Northeast region of Japan that was flattened by the 3.11 tsunami was featured in a new documentary film called “3.11 – Surviving Japan” (15). I give the documentary 3 out of 5 stars (making an independent film must be tremendously difficult) and although some of it recycles video images from the destroyed cityscape scenery and is overly melodramatic, the film also brought to light original information and interviews about the difficulties of the clean up and impact from the tsunami and nuclear disaster on people’s lives.

This hardship is documented in a new report: “Tsunami evacuees caught in $30 billion Japan money trap.” Three and a half years after the disaster thousands of refugees are still living in cramped and inadequate temporary housing units.

Thirty billion dollars in funding for roads, bridges and thousands of new homes in areas devastated by the tsunami in Japan three and a half years ago is still languishing unspent in the bank (16).

It is understandable that logistical and bureaucratic issues will have hampered rapid progress with a problem of this magnitude (17). Houses are not being built quickly enough due to rising costs and labor shortages. I wonder if the government’s initial underestimate of the cost of housing is not due to profiteering among those that might be able to make a buck on other’s misery. What shadowy interests and agendas are at play here? The entire construction industry (Doken Kokka, or “Construction State”) is a triad between government bureaucracy (Ministry of Construction); heavy industry and the political right/organized crime sector. The revelation that Japan Atomic Power Co., secretly donated 1.54 billion yen to a city government is just one instance of the financial corruption that inhabits the country (18).

The Fukushima disaster could be an opportunity to develop renewable energy and greener construction practices but the government as so far squandered it. Freelance journalist Winifred Bird who lives in Japan reports with a keen environmental perspective about the construction industry’s monstrously anti-environmental practices:

In the years leading up to the massive tsunami of March 11, 2011, it seemed that Japan’s coastal ecosystems could hardly decline in health any further. Decades of coastal engineering had divided land from ocean, turned quaint seaside towns grey with concrete, and pushed once-familiar species like loggerhead sea turtles and common orient clams towards extinction. Nearly half of the island nation’s perimeter was modified in some way; cliffs comprised most of what remained untouched….

Then came the once-in-a-thousand-year tsunami. Walls of water swept over the coast of northeastern Japan, claiming more than 15,000 lives and destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings, together with 60 percent of seawalls. In the rubble-covered wasteland that remained, scholars, activists, and fishermen alike saw a chance to rethink how people live on the coast.

Instead, national and regional government bodies are moving to recreate the concrete coastline that existed before. Reconstruction plans in heavily damaged Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures call for a string of stunningly tall and wide seawalls. Some have already been built; many others are in the final stages of planning. A second layer of raised earthen banks topped with pine trees is also planned in many places. And with Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic administration promising a major infusion of funding for disaster prevention projects nationwide, new seawalls are in the works well beyond northeastern Japan.

The goal is to protect human communities along the coast. But ecologists, environmentalists, and some coastal residents say the plans are an environmental calamity (19).

So while thousands of people are being forgotten in their temporary housing, money is being prioritized to pour concrete and repaint the coastline in gray. This supplies jobs to construction workers and large payouts to heavy industry. We see the same mistake being repeated as with the opportunity to rethink energy policy. There is a clear lack of creativity and forward thinking on the part of with the old boy network lining their pockets with taxpayer largesse.

Insult To Injury: Tepco Profiteers

Pillage the public with the other hand and with the other block to guard against liabilities. Tepco and the government practice a hard hearted niggardliness (in Japanese: “ketchi” to be a mean spirited cheapskate) for anyone seeking economic compensation for their losses. In one case a woman has been “urged to repay nuke disaster compensation after she enters college outside Fukushima” (20). This is nominally to prevent brain drain, but you can’t blame people whose towns have been destroyed for seeking opportunities elsewhere.

In the meantime Tepco predicts a 1.3 billion dollar pretax profit for the year even though they have been heavily subsidized (quasi-nationalized) by the government (21). In the real world criminals are punished for their bad behavior but in the world of “too big to fail” corporate crimes are rewarded and the bigger the crime the bigger the reward. We have seen this with the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailouts and too many other examples to mention.

The costs of Tepco’s incompetence at Fukushima are passed onto taxpayers, so why not give them the ultra-pleasant double shaft by upping their electricity rates as well (22). It matters not that democratization and free competition from solar and other renewable sources could contribute to the national energy solution (23). Life style, housing, work, energy, they’re all related.

Olympian Monument To Greed

A billion dollars here, a billion there, pretty soon we’re talkin’ real money. The 2012 British Olympic stadium was built for about one quarter to just a fifth the proposed cost of the new Tokyo Olympic stadium. The new “Tokyo stadium for 2020 Olympics could cost up to ¥300 billion,” 3 billion dollars (24). A famous Japanese architect I saw on TV said the original 1964 Olympic stadium could meet the needs of the games by being refurbished for just a fraction of the cost of a new stadium.

The Tokyo Shimbun documented the estimated cost increases from the time the Olympics was decided upon to the present day. In order to persuade Tokyoites that the original cost was not so formidable, the real plans to line the pockets of construction companies and investors were kept secret and only gradually unveiled.

I wonder if the reason the Japanese public is so easily hoodwinked is because of the greater participation of civil society in the UK which managed to minimize the Olympics Rip-Off (ORO) through oversight and regulation. In Japan civil society is marginalized and kept weak and inept.

ORO is an old scam: The “[n]egative impact of 1964 Olympics [was] profound… The 1964 Tokyo Olympics had a profound impact on the capital city and the nation [including] the environmental and human impact that resulted from hosting the event” (26).

People in our neighborhood in central Tokyo have complained that they think the Olympics construction will pull funds and labor away from needed projects such as building parks, schools, bicycle parking lots, community centers and other badly needed public facilities (not to mention the cleaning up of Fukushima) that the public has already paid for with tax money.

Floundering Economy

Efforts to solve the Fukushima nuclear crisis and rebuild Tohoku have been less than stellar thus far if not appallingly lacking. Even though the 2020 Olympics are many years off, the LDP led by Prime Malefactor Abe is hoping the Olympics tax payer Feeding Frenzy For Crony Criminals (FFFCC) will help revive the economy. In the meantime the Bank of Japan inject 80 trillion yen (800 billion dollars) a year into the stock market mainly through bond sales (27). This bout of money printing was meant to stave off deflation and justify a higher sales tax.

Anyone familiar with the way central banks operate in recent years will be wary of such recklessness. So called “Abenomics” was determined to be a flop back in the summer of this year (28) as the public has grown increasingly skeptical of progress due to rising consumer prices not met with salary increases.

Once the global economy rolls over into contraction, the tide will recede and Japan’s fiscal and monetary bankruptcy will become painfully apparent. What do you get after 25 years of stagnation and Keynesian Cargo Cult monetary stimulus? A failing state, that’s what. The intellectually bankrupt ruling Elites of Japan have no solution for Japan’s slow stagnation, as real reform would diminish their wealth and power. So their only ‘solution’ is to double-down on monetary stimulus: flood the enfeebled Japanese economy with more credit and fiscal stimulus, a.k.a. building bridges to nowhere… But reality isn’t as immobile as failed policies. While Japan’s ruling Elites fiddled away the past 25 years propping up sclerotic cartels and phantom loans, Japan’s population has aged and its primary sources of wealth creation have atrophied (29).

The goose that laid the golden egg is dying of radioactive cancer.

Even as Abe’s “ministers [are predictably] hit by more scandals” and his “political ratings fade” the rampage against the Japanese middle class and the enfeebled democracy of the country continues (30; 31). I like what someone in the comment section at the Japan Times wrote for its pithiness:

rossdorn: The huge majority of Japanese will never vote Abe out of office. First, because it is rude to criticize authorities. If someone becomes Prime Minister, he must deserve it. Second, Japan is a one party democracy, there is no alternative. And third, Abe will already have been out of his office for some time, by the time the next election happens (32).

Minamisoma city council member Koichi Oyama voiced some deep secrets about Japanese cultural traits after the Fukushima disaster had doused his town’s children with avoidable plumes of radiation:

I would like to explain something historical to better your understanding. Japan used to be ruled by a king, the emperor. Parents and teachers told children the best thing they could do was die for their country. Kamikaze pilots in the war embodied this spirit. In World War II they always told us we were winning every battle. No one knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The same thing is happening now. The current government not telling people what is happening is the same we have had since World War II. Keep your country alive by killing yourself. I think the way to save the children at Fukushima is to get the world involved. If we don’t protect our children now, it will be too late when we are the second Chernobyl. Not allowing the children to escape is murder (33).

Just in case the media were to get too bold, the government is happy to censor information vital to nuclear damage victims while Abe carries out his “Assault On Press Freedom” (34; 35). While the Japanese parliament focuses on important matters such as proper dress code for women (36) (how dare women get involved in politics anyway), the country’s infrastructure is in dire need of maintaining and rebuilding (37; 38; 39). But Abe’s Caligulian dream of an extravagant Olympics stadium must be achieved.

The same problems essentially plague any modern “democracy” in the West where money rules politics and governments are slaves to special interests, central bankers and corporate power and the people are cannon fodder for wars of aggression.

In line with recent decades of right wing politico-economic trends that have swept the world in recent decades (eg., Reagan-Thatcher era and beyond), Japan’s once robust middle class is being sacrificed as “Japan defense budget request highest ever as Abe boosts military [while] [o]officials seek ¥5.05 trillion [over 50 billion dollars] amid Abe’s security push” (40). While small compared to the military budget of the US, led by Zionist Neo-cons and their willing puppet and amateur golf enthusiast, Barack “Nobel Peace Prize Winner and I never met a war I didn’t love” Obama, for Japan it is their “biggest [military] budget ever.” Liberals who support Obama claim Republicans are worse than Democrats, I say “Republicans are the worst, but Democrats are just as bad.” “Obama [once] Promised a ‘World Without Nuclear Weapons,”‘ but [he] May Now Spend $1 Trillion on Upgrades” (41).

Collapsing Social Structure

The overall trends for Japan’s middle class are not optimistic. The Japan Times reports that “[i]rregular workers now account for 38 percent of the workforce and the average salary of an irregular worker is much lower than that of a regular full-time employee” (42). Furthermore, “[l]ow-wage part-time workers [are] increasing” (43; 44).

The trend is common: “[p]art-time work [is] dominating jobs in the United States, Canada, and Japan” (45). In the UK “[g]oing to work is more stressful than ever” due to excessive work load and the threat of randomly being fired (46).

Due to the Bank of Japan money printing, the weakening yen has driven up prices five times faster than wages are increasing (they aren’t increasing at all). In addition, increasing sales taxes are walloping consumer’s wallets when they go to the shop (47; 48; 49).

More and more students are being forced to drop out of universities, colleges and vocational schools because they cannot afford tuition, according to a new education ministry survey. The economic downturn means many young people can no longer afford higher education. More students than ever before, most of them from less well-off families, are finding that the dream of studying must be given up because they cannot pay for it. The education ministry survey of 1,163 of 1,191 Japanese public and private universities, two-year colleges and vocational schools found that nearly 80,000 students permanently left higher education in 2013. The number of students who left college temporarily was nearly 70,000. Lack of money was the top reason given by students who quit or took leave (51).

Is this what Japanese people worked so hard for during the decades of the “economic miracle” — to see it all whither away?

In the US not only is higher education absurdly overpriced, it is largely an embarrassment of intellectual mediocrity if not quackery. US university educator Anthony DiMaggio sums it up in his essay “Academic Fraud and the Ponzi Scheme of ‘Higher Learning’ ”:

Most research that is published is simply not important enough to read, and this reality speaks to the tremendous resources being wasted at public and private colleges and universities (52).

The modern university system rewards professors for carrying out obscure, non threatening research into niche specialization areas as opposed to socially and politically relevant areas of inquiry. Tenured professors have cushy — sit on your bum positions — while the bulk of teaching is done by the underpaid and job-insecure irregular teaching force.

Depleted Ecosystems
Our planetary ecosystems are being destroyed by the modern capitalist system and by participant countries, companies and consumers. Satellite photos from space show the destructive effects of fishing by trawlers that are scrapping the bottom of the oceans, while on land mindless Japanese and Chinese consumerism promotes animal poaching and deforestation in Congo, one of the last great rainforest ecosystems on Earth (53; 54).

It is more urgent than ever to wake up our fellow travelers to the dire consequences we face. How ironic that all the free energy we could ever need is readily available if only we could set ourselves free (55).

*Post script: I have heard it said that Israel sabotaged Fukushima to get revenge on the Japanese. According to the Jerusulem Post (http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Israeli-firms-cameras-recording-Japanese-nuclear-core) the Israeli Magna corporation provided security at Fukushima at the time of the disaster. I question the veracity of the article (which may have been posted in order to spread confusion among conspiracy researchers). My guess is it is a lie! Why would Japan need to employ Israelis when Japan is one of the most high-tech countries in the world and their nuclear power program is so carefully guarded against prying eyes? I have never seen a reference to this Israeli presence at Fukushima in either the Japanese or American press. Japan may not have refuted it publicly because they fear the Zionists. I stand to be corrected and welcome independent verification of this story. However, the Israeli Mossad live by deception, muddying the waters, divide and conquer and confusion-causing tactics. Most of what “intelligence operatives” do is not very intelligent, but is the deliberate spreading of lies for geopolitical ends.

Richard Wilcox is a Tokyo-based teacher and writer who holds a Ph.D. in environmental studies and is a regular contributor to the world’s leading website exposing the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Rense.com. He is a contributing editor and co-author of the book: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization? (2014). His radio interviews and articles are archived at http://wilcoxrb99.wordpress.com and he can be reached by email for radio or internet podcast interviews to discuss the Fukushima crisis at wilcoxrb2013@gmail.com.